


Africa

by sfiddy



Series: Balcony Duet verse [2]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Balcony Duet universe, Cute, F/M, Highly explicit musical commentary, Humor, I dropped everything for Wheel of Fish, Modern AU, Non-Explicit Sex, Romance, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 06:59:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19388899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sfiddy/pseuds/sfiddy
Summary: Based on a Tumblr Prompt from Wheel of Fish:  "Africa" by Toto.The theater cast and crew decide to have a challenge to make the off-season maintenance work more fun.  Erik needs to air grievances.  Romance and humor from my favorite AU ship.In the same universe as the story Balcony Duet.





	Africa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wheel_of_fish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_of_fish/gifts).



> In which I ended up going down a musical memory lane and kind of writing an essay.

It started as a joke. As a group, the company decided to have a contest while they did the off-season maintenance work. The rules were simple: each week, find the worst song from every decade of the 20th century onward. Entries were compiled by nine in the morning and played all day to the laughter and boos of the interns, swings, and principles as they tidied, painted, and repaired or otherwise put his lovely theater to rights. The top five offenders were replayed until a general agreement was reached. 

It took very little time for Erik to decide that 'worst' was highly subjective. He _liked_ ragtime, damn it, for the promise of jazz was buried in the eddies of its irregular rhythm. His entry of the 1910 German operetta _Gypsy Love_ , notable not only for the pervasive slurs but also a plot that was only in evidence by the fact that it had three acts, fell out of the running by the third day.

“Erik, it’s a game,” Christine said gently, kissing his cheek. “You should really find something better to do.”

He dumped a finger of whiskey into a glass instead. “I mean, three entire acts! The audience would have been dying and they decide Scott Joplin should be kicked off the island!”

Christine sighed at him and gave him a little smile that said she would soothe his bruised ego at a more convenient time. One where they weren’t each manning a table of donuts and offering theater tours to curious passers by in exchange for donations and subscriptions.

He huffed, and a gray haired woman eyed him with suspicion. “Fine,” Erik groused. “One way or another I will win one of these.”

…

He lost the 1930s to a rare recording of a mock flapper singing Mozart’s _Der Holle Rache_ , meticulously digitized by some scholar and lovingly restored to its full screeching glory. He could hardly bear the winner any ill will.

He and Christine fell into a heap on the futon, weak with laughter.

“But how?” she wheezed. 

“What do you mean how? It just is, and shouldn’t be. And should be burned.”

“No,” she said, untangling herself from his long limbs. He would have been disappointed except she stripped her shirt off and pulled him close to nuzzle between her soft breasts. God, they were about to destroy the new futon, weren’t they? They’d only gotten it a few months ago, but it was already wobbling at the joints.

His office was a hazardous environment for anything with a flat surface.

“No?” he said, then shut himself up. There were times when his mouth had better things to do than make noise.

“ _Yeah_ , no, no. I mean, why did they… _oh my god_ … it sounds like Betty Boop singing with a cork in her mouth?”

His chuckle had her gripping his head, grinding down onto him. The futon protested. Maybe there was a rapid-reorder button for these things. Maybe a roll of duct tape.

“Oh, Christine,” he said, nipping lightly. “Elocution.”

…

As the decades advanced, the game grew more amusing. Not because anything was particularly funny, but the landscape of music changed so drastically compared to prior centuries. After the world wars, industry at large was no longer devoted to the military, so as manufacturers produced new cars and appliances, the creative industries dove into a wildly evolving musical landscape.

Christine tabbed through another playlist. “So, less Glenn Miller, and more rock and roll?”

From the piano, Erik laughed wickedly. “And hangers on, wannabes, bad imitators, and cash grabs, sure. They were always there, but now there’s recorded evidence.” He played a few bars from a dozen instantly recognizable songs. “The best performers were still geniuses, but…” he flourished into a keyboard smash. 

A laugh, then a cork popped behind him. Christine had just finished a big project and felt like celebrating, and he always kept cold bubbly around these days. Why not? 

She poured too hard and had to slurp at her wine flute. “Let me guess, trash is always trash?”

He grinned and rose from the piano bench, tempted by the mustache of champagne foam glistening on her lip. “Always.” 

Christine melted into him when he got a taste of it. Then she slushed his insides by grabbing his belt and pulling him against her. Hard corners still found soft places in their world, even now, more than a year later. She gripped his belt, fingertips grazing into places that recognized her and were delighted to greet her again.

As she stepped back and let him lean against a counter, Christine smirked. “Do you really care about this dumb contest?

“I’m gonna go with a firm maybe right now.”

She wiggled her fingers. “Firm alright.”

“ _Christine!_ ”

She took a long drink from her champagne. “Alright, I’ll help you, but we’ve got decades of absolute garbage to start plowing through. But before we do, you’re going to spend a night plowing me to make up for all the pure shit I know I’m about to listen to for the next month and a half.” She emptied the glass and shoved it into his chest with a raised eyebrow. “Got it?”

“I love you.”

He refilled her glass without being asked and let her drag him toward the bedroom by his belt.

…

The fifties were easy. Christine won with some mortifying trash that should have been condemned to the hell of eternal revision just for the lyrics. An invasive sax solo rendered the song’s genre so incoherent the whole thing should be flung into the pit. She even managed to find a recorded interview with the musicians and while the entire company agreed that it was wrong to judge based on modern standards _oh my god you can’t say that didn’t they know that actual microphones would record actual sounds that actual people might hear one day?_

She even gloated a little as she and Erik cleaned out the smallest backstage storage closet. It was hardly large enough for someone to stand in, but they both donned long sleeves and gloves for the job.

“Hey look! I found it. The mother lode.” Christine sang the opening bars of an ‘Alleluia’ as she withdrew her prize: a huge plastic kitchen container stuffed to the brim with packets of gummy bears, sour candies, and mints. 

“Praise the lord,” he muttered. “I refuse to risk another year of infestation for anyone’s sweet tooth.” Erik turned away to deal with a cobweb as Christine unscrewed the lid to dig around for a favorite candy.

“Oh my god.”

“What?” At the horror in her voice, he instantly leapt down from his ladder, clutching at her to find injuries. “Are you okay?”

Christine’s arm was buried inside the container and the horror on her face was morphing into something new. Erik was about to snatch the big jar away but she withdrew her hand, holding a handful of brightly colored packets.

Her face turned bright red. “Erik, the candy. It’s glued against the sides of the jar!”

Erik squinted at the packets, making out the labels. “Then what the hell are… nope.” He stood abruptly and wrapped his hands around the payload Christine was clutching. 

“I’m going to forget I saw any of that,” Christine said, paling.

“Nope, nope, nope,” Erik repeated as he jammed a rainbow of condom packets back into the jar while he carried it to the break room. He deposited it right in the middle of the table before backing away like it was toxic.

Christine settled her hair, knocking a few bits of drywall and fluff out of the curls. “So, the invention of multitrack recording?”

Erik cleared his throat and patted the mask lightly. “Ah yes. On to the 1960s.”

…

They had their laptops side by side, bringing inventories and budgets into alignment while a playlist from the nineteen seventies played.

“Is it just me, or was this decade just… strange?”

Erik shook his head and highlighted a column for later checking. “I think the term you’re looking for is ‘marinated in a slurry of cocaine and quaaludes,’ but strange is close enough.”

Christine glanced over at his screen and clicked to check dates and purchase orders. “You’re forgetting the barely veiled pedophelia, misogyny, and a stagnant inability to let go of Paul McCartney.”

“Ouch,” he winced, but nodded in agreement. “And yet the same era gave us Queen, Zeppelin, Elton John, punk, mainstreamed urban hip hop, new wave jazz, and the birth of rap.”

Christine opened a new playlist on her phone and scrolled through. “You forgot disco.”

“I did not _forget_ disco.”

“Ah yes. You just don’t recognize it,” Christine laughed, and went to top off her tea. “I hope you know the entire roller rink industry owes its existence to ABBA.”

“Thank you for that cursed knowledge.” Erik stretched and joined her in the kitchen as she glanced through the song list, bored and achy after a solid three hours of budgeting and forecasting. “There are few things I can think of that would more effectively ruin a twelve year old girl’s birthday party than me, flopping around in skates.”

“Holy shit, Erik.”

“You don’t have to agree _that_ strongly.”

“No, no, I have it. The worst song of the seventies. Oh, I’m totally gonna win this one.” When she turned her phone and showed him her screen, Erik gained a new frame of reference for second hand embarrassment and schadenfreude. 

It was decided, since music and visual media had intertwined by the seventies with the advent of the single song music video (as opposed to variety shows and movie musicals), and the imminent debut of MTV, that submissions to the game would be split into music and music plus video categories. As cover songs and tribute piled up, Erik banned repeating songs for the sake of his sanity. 

The entire company had to haul its collective self from the floor after viewing Christine's entry of The Captain and Tenille’s “Muskrat Love”, and Erik sniggered at the drop-jawed stares, glad he was finally in good company. She graciously deferred the win in favor of the runner up (“You’re Having My Baby” by Paul Anka), who won the right to the first cup of coffee of the morning and the last Red Bull in the fridge every day for a week.

Erik had to declare official no-screen times and tasks during work, because there were only so many hours he could afford to lose. Besides, he had to work on the microphone system and could handle being nearly deafened only so many times by cackles of laughter.

…

Digital music was a blessing and a curse. The merging of multitrack with digital sound and the expansion of technology meant that the rest of the decades would be feel rushed. 

“There’s just so much,” Christine sighed. “I mean, you could blow the entire week just going through Top of the Pops and you’d still be looking at just Britpop.”

Exhausted after a full day in the rafters cleaning, greasing, repairing and resetting the entire fly system, Erik took a long pull from his glass and refilled Christine’s wine. “Has anyone looked at country? Because there’s some real garbage on the rise in the eighties.” As he handed her the glass, he winced.

“You did too much today, and your face is raw from all the dust up there. You need to trust them more. One has a degree in engineering, I’m pretty sure he can handle some tracks and gears.” She ran her fingertips along his spine and Erik was suddenly aware of the knots lumping his back. “C’mere, you can tell me more while I rub your back.”

She led him from the sofa to their bedroom and helped him take off his shirt, then tucked a pillow under him when he was laying on his stomach. Within seconds he was gritting his teeth at just the release of strain.

“Deep breaths, baby. Tell me about the bad music.”

It felt like he was being pulled apart, but as long as Christine held his hand and it would be okay in a minute. “Okay, so pop music is defined by popularity, it’s not really a genre or style. It’s just what gets played, so ‘pop’ varies from country to country, and in the case of larger countries, region to region. There are few places so extreme as America.”

“Oh, I’m liking this thesis. Have you worked on it long?”

“Oh ha, ha-- _oh my god_ ,” he gasped as her hands applied light pressure just at the curve of his spine. 

“How was that?”

“I’m an inch taller. Do it again.”

“Music. I’ll work you over if you talk.”

“Fine. Knowing all that, between the consolidation of radio stations by large companies, negotiated company playlists, and the political --oof-- landscape of the early 1980’s, country music made a huge --oh yeah -- run at radioplay on the national level. A handful of superstars didn’t hurt.”

Christine dug along a lump and Erik’s knuckles went white, fisting in the sheets. “Like Dolly Parton?”

“Yep,” he squeaked. “Crossover artists, too. Kenny Rogers started as a psychedelic rock guy in the seventies.”

“Weird.” 

“There was plenty of solid stuff, too, but with any hot new field comes a lot of utter crap.” As cynical as the topic was, with Christine working a knot loose he probably sounded like he was reading a love poem.

She was smiling. He could hear it. “I’m detecting a pattern.”

“You think?” he laughed. “I’m sure you see it in design all the time. One artist makes something new or combines elements a new way and a thousand worse variations follow until everyone hates it and lumps the original in with the impostors, then spend a few years panning it until the next hot trend comes along.”

“Shiplap and chevrons,” Christine quipped, digging her fingers in deeper than necessary.

“Suuuuuure,” he rasped. “And though there was some great talent there was also a lot of commercialized rustic, back-to-nature, overly-romantic and frankly stupid nostagia for things that never existed.” His list was punctuated with wheezes as he rolled with Christine’s pressure. God, it was like she could hit the rewind button on his spine.

“Hmmm,” she mused, draining her glass. “Hang on, I’m gonna get a refill. I feel like you’re getting to some interesting points.”

Erik stretched out, and a few numbish places in his skin tingled back to life and set zings across his shoulders and into his fingers. He’d need to take something tomorrow, but for now his bones felt soft and he let his joints sag into the pillow under him. Christine’s hands were clever at so many things, from dealing with the AV system to this. He gave his lower back an experimental flex. 

Something woke up. Maybe he wasn’t as tired as he thought he was.

“Hey babe. Sorry that took so long, I drank half a glass looking through 1980’s music and had to refill again.” She took another swallow and crawled on the bed to straddle him. “Okay, so I think I need to get a few deeper spots, so I’m gonna use some stuff. That alright?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

The bedside table drawer opened and he could hear her rummaging away. Finally a cap popped open and shut, and a cool slick spread over his back. Very slick.

“What is that? That’s not… did you just use _lube?_ ”

She burst into giggles. “Well, I couldn’t find the massage oil.”

“I’m covered in lube.”

“Well, there’s clean sheets if you’re worried about that.” She started massaging between his shoulder blades and if he thought his bones felt soft before, now he wasn’t sure he had any at all.

“Never mind. I was about to complain but now I’m going to buy a gallon of it. So you’ve got this wild, super patriotic, mom-and-apple-pie streak clashing with the cocaine fueled eighties. If the performers weren’t obliterating their septums with blow, the producers were.” 

At that moment, Christine reached for her wineglass, lightly settling her other hand between his shoulder blades for balance. But lube is slick. Very slick. Her hand slid and she landed across his back, spread eagled.

“Oof, sorry,” she laughed. “Can you hand me my wine?”

“That depends. How much lube is left?”

“Trust me, we don’t need it.”

Later, with limbs properly loosened and the aches just part of the sensory haze, Erik lazily kissed a breast and sighed happily. Christine traced his shoulder and the knobs of his spine. “That stuff made your skin super soft.”

“I’m not using it on my face, if that’s where you’re going.”

“Would it be weird if I said I might try it on my face?”

There wasn’t a safe response, though his mind had supplied no less than three. Erik silenced himself with a mouthful of her until it was safe to change the subject.

“Who hasn’t won a week yet?”

Christine’s eyes were dazed, then slid back into focus. “Um, there’s Andy, the high school kid? He’s entered every week but hasn’t made the final five more than once.”

“I’ve got a few songs for him, then. One’s got to win.”

Her giggle resonated against his face. “Are you making other people do your dirty work now?”

“Not at all. I save the dirtiest work for myself.” He crawled up her body and settled, loving the way she just opened herself for him. 

She wriggled down and tucked her arms under his. “You’re plotting.”

“Maybe I’m just petty.”

They didn’t get the sheets changed until the next morning.

That week, young Andy won the song-only category by a landslide with “Elvira” by the Oak Ridge Boys. He also won runner up with Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” He happily traded his coffee rights to the music video winner (“Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor) in exchange for a case of La Croix.

Erik did not miss how Christine side eyed him when he skipped away from the awards to lock up. 

…

The nineties were like the eighties, but with the addition of boredom, flannel, and computers, or what much of the company took to be a computer. As much as Erik wanted to watch the goings on more closely, there was a season to schedule and he’d been distracted enough. Between meetings with the company and the restoration team, Christine gave brief updates about the game over coffee, or a cocktail in the evening.

This evening, Christine rattled her ice, swirling meltwater back into the drink. The humid night had condensation dripping off her glass.

Erik squeezed lime into his and stirred it with his finger. A too-long day was finally over and he could enjoy the reward of time at home with Christine. It wasn’t so long ago that an evening like this-- kisses and conversation, a drink and music-- had seemed distant and foreign. Unlikely at best. Yet here he was.

“What was in the playlist today?” he asked, sliding his fingertips over the keys. A nocturne to start. Notes floated, ribbons in the wind.

She laughed, and joined him by the piano. “I thought you’d never ask. You’re going to love this.”

“Oh?” Lord, he adored soft piano on a warm summer night. Crickets and cicadas and Chopin.

“Promise me you’ll keep playing.”

“Okay,” he drifted into a faint tremolo, tickling the keys into playful resonance rather than a rumble.

“Achy Breaky Heart.”

His hands stifferened for a moment, and he blew out a breath. “You should have warned me. Next?”

“Barbie Girl.”

His fingers danced across the board. “I thought that was a fever dream.”

“Sorry, no. Next is The Thong Song, Rico Suave, and Ice, Ice, Baby.”

He missed a note. “Why would you remind me of those? I thought you loved me.”

“Oh, just you wait. Refill?”

“I have a feeling I’ll need it. How’s the printing coming?”

Christine opened a good gin and swirled tonic and lime into the glass. “Great. Delivery tomorrow. And we had some late sponsors who eased the costs, so you have thank you notes to write tomorrow. Use the nice paper I got you, okay?”

“Got it. Any favorites on the list?” He gave a lopsided smile when she delivered his drink with a kiss. He translated it into a few bright bars that sounded like birds singing.

“My vote is on Mmm Bop,” she said, settling onto the sofa again. “But there’s a faction that nominated The Freshman and is really--”

Fingers tripped. A record scratched. Birds took wing, and distant sirens stung the quiet.

“What?” Erik stood and sharply rapped his fingers on the fallboard. He disappeared half the drink in a single mouthful and turned. “Who?”

“Like the Verve Pipe, do you?”

“No, but I like that song and so does Moby so which of the children thinks it can possibly be worse than the other chewed bubble gum and uncompostables on the list?”

She grinned. “I have a better idea.”

After an evening of dancing on the theater stage to rockabilly and revival swing, it was a tie between The Thong Song and Achy Breaky Heart. The winners agreed to share the spoils of victory since one hated coffee anyway. It should be noted that a new rumor was spreading through the staff that the nineties were a touchy musical age for the boss, as he had ghostwritten no less than four number one hits from the era, though no one knew which ones. It was assumed to be true, for few people embodied the internal conflict of workaholic and ennui typical of the era quite so well. 

It amused Erik to no end.

“Me? Ennui?” he said, and grazed the back of Christine’s knee with his teeth.

She shivered.

…

The ‘noughts came and went in a dream much like they had the first time around. The end of summer was nearing and wrap ups on building maintenance, the AV and rigging systems, not to mention the last summer camp and intern program, had the place in a whirl. It left little time for anything but survival meals and coffee chasers.

Which was why Christine had decided to spend Thursday morning ignoring the contest, design work, and the theater spreadsheets in favor of organizing a box of meal prep containers. The kitchen counters were covered in stacks of sectioned boxes and colorful lids.

Erik only grew concerned when the cookbooks emerged. He was not a fan of singers diets. 

“No kale,” he grumbled on his way to the coffee pot, resisting the urge to scratch his face. He was staying home for the day on Christine’s orders to have a day out of the mask. He normally took it off in his office, wearing it for only a few hours a day, but had it on close to ten hours a day lately.

“Fine, grumpy.” She kissed his jaw and tossed the unmatched lids and containers into the recycling and put the rest away. “I know it doesn’t affect you, but this pizza and crap diet is starting to show on me.”

It was. She’d gotten rounder and he liked it. Curvy Christine looked incredible on stage, too. The spotlight positively craved her.

“Erik?”

“Huh?”

“I was saying that the two-thousands are finishing up tomorrow. Want me to text you the finalists from work or just tell you when I get home?”

He drained his coffee and flipped open his laptop. “Just tell me when you get home. I’ll have dinner started.” 

“No you won’t. I already have a grain salad made. You can pour the marinade on the salmon at six if you want to help.”

“Can I help myself to a whiskey?”

She picked up her work bag and kissed him. “Only if you finish the inventory order first. I love you.”

Before she could quite get away, Erik snagged her sleeve and Christine made no real attempt to escape.

“I love you.” A few quick kisses later, he let her go and reached for his coffee again. “On second thought, text me if any of the finalists in the game are cover songs or remakes, please?”

“There’s one, Changes by Ozzy Osbourne and his daughter but it’s got real competition. The Chipmunk Song “Get Munk’d” is in the mix.”

The coffee cup broke on the kitchen floor. 

On Friday the entire company raised a toast to honor the most ironically bad hit song in their collective memory: a song from a children’s movie, featuring a pack of horny, dreadfully autotuned rodents serenading an object of lust with a thinly veiled offer of group sex.

“And that is what happens when people who don’t understand parody try to write it.” Erik quipped as he shut off the house lights and headed to the doors to lock up.

“How do you suggest they might have approached the whole ‘let’s force the animated chipmunks to sing bad exploitation music’ plot angle-- oh, hang on. Oh dear...”

“You’re seeing it now?”

“Oh god,” Christine whispered. “What have we become?”

“I ask myself the same thing every day.”

…

He wore his headphones for most of the weekend, jotting down notes, and tapping out melody on every flat surface his hands happened to touch. The company assumed he was building the next year’s repertoire. Christine suspected something else.

“Are you going to tell me?” she asked one afternoon over cubes of pan fried tofu and grain salad. 

“Not until we submit the entries.”

“Got a good one?”

He just shoved a block of tofu in his mouth and smiled.

There was some initial protest to the inclusion of Wheezer’s “Africa”. The company should have known better.

A voice called from the seats. "Hey, I thought you said no repeated songs!"

Erik grinned. "If you'll recall, "Africa" by Toto was not nominated in the eighties week. It seems country music was a prime offender that decade."

Then with a manner made no less stately and imperial by the subject matter, he turned on his microphone and began. “Being in the performing arts, I think we all view derivative work with a kinder eye than much of the public. With that in mind I submit the following cover songs from recent history. First, we all know “Purple Rain” by Prince. What you may not be familiar with is the cover by Dwight Yoakum.” He gestured at the AV box. “Christine, if you please?”

A thirty second clip ran.

“Whether it’s to your liking or not, you have to admit, it’s different, derivative, and respectful of the source. Now, “99 Red Balloons” by Nina and don’t any of you dare correct me, there was an official English release, and the cover by Goldfinger.”

Again, a clip ran.

Erik grinned. “An absolute bop. Now, last but not least, “Because the Night” by Patti Smith, covered by Natalie Merchant.” When the clip ended, Erik winked up at the AV box. “Now that you’ve heard that, let’s listen to the original “Africa” by Toto, and then the new release by Wheezer.”

An uncomfortable minute passed.

“Anyone hear a difference? No? And that's why it’s the worst song on the radio right now. Not because it’s a bland, incomprehensible gob of yacht rock, but because it’s _all that and cheap karaoke_. This pack of pseudo-indie leftovers looked at a VH1 refugee and said ‘Yes, this is it. This is what brings us to the studio today’, then proceeded to hold a singalong. Say what you will about a man that dares to cover “Purple Rain”, at least he made it his own. I like my coffee strong and fresh at seven thirty sharp. Have a great weekend.”

Christine had the foresight to remotely shut the mic off before it hit the stage floor.

…

**Author's Note:**

> I realize that I refer to works inconsistently-- sometimes italics, sometimes quotes. A hazard of writing a few paragraphs at a time.


End file.
